R&D XCOM Map Alterations

[johnnylump]

So are we at the point we could take one of the highway maps, move some cars around, and pop it in Long War as a new map? If not, what's left to figure out?

[Zyxpsilon]

Goo-did-dily-loo... i guess that pretty much solves the theory that *IF* anything worthy of runtime integration can actually be ready for Beta15 - we would all get to tryout some new custom map (or more).

Gotta love how LIQuiD911 & Alumni(s) created such a revolution in gameplay potential.

 

Although, i want me some TRUCKS & 8-Wheeler-VANS(Doors opened) along with TrashCans and a Fountain -- they provide full cover in half-decent manners. :D

Edited January 25, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[LiQuiD911]

I'll try to clean up the cars from a highway (as wghost suggested). The real problem is that I do not know where sight blocking is calculated. The Bomb actor in special missions provides vision blocking ( by example in the trainyard) so streamed maps can alter it. So now high actors provide high cover but you can shoot through them.At this point I could make a roadwaymap made out of halfcover cars.

I still haven't tried to create a stub texture/material for the stub meshes (I'm not sure if the lighting is baked in the original one)

There are two directions in which we can go :

-use the current maps as tile sets and stream in object stubs. Eventualy i think we can load more "tilesets" to use objects from different maps. This method will produce smaller maps and distrubution would be more "legal" because what we distribute doesn't contain any real xcom art

-extract and re-import the art assets to use in map streams. This allows easier mixing of objects but also bloats the size of a map since the meshes are included in it. Moreover, I haven't tried to add custo tfc files to xcom. If we want to reconstruct the lost vanilla maps, this is the way to go (by exporting meshes and textures and then rebuilding the actor locations)

 

It seems that hex writing 00s in the object list in the Persistent Level object of a map removes them without crashing! Stay tuned :)

Edited January 25, 2015 by LiQuiD911

[johnnylump]

Gotcha. Major hurdle left is establishing sightlines.

 

Are buildings handled the same way as vehicles -- can they be placed and moved around in big chunks like that?

[LiQuiD911]

I think they are made of actors which can be destructable, floors , plain xcomlevel actors etc.. they are not a single mesh like cars.

 

Call wghost, we need an automated Persistent level cleaner :smile:

 

I've removed some actors and emitters manualy from persistent level

http://i59.tinypic.com/2sa17nk.jpg

 

replace any of these with 00-00-00-00

 

the XX is the id of the object

 

XX-1E-00-00 and XX-1D-00-00 are destructible actors

XX-1F-00-00 are frac level actors (car windows)

XX-03-00-00 are emitters

 

I think XX-20-00-00 are decorative and terrain (plus the permanent halfcover) meshes

 

at least in this map. I haven't checked if the codes are consistent over different maps

 

edit: the codes are not completely consistent in the same map

 

after this cleanup the cover logic is still there, a rebuild world volume is required to fix the cover

also, the shadows remain on the floor

 

I did some texture testing and found a wierd pattern: meshes that have a texture in the umodel preview do not need a stub material, its applied automaticly! But only few meshes have a preview : mostly destroyed hulls ,alien fog pods and some random objects

I couldn't set a texture to other stub objects

Any ideas why umodel doesn't apply textures to meshes?

Edited January 25, 2015 by LiQuiD911

[Zyxpsilon]

Any ideas why umodel doesn't apply textures to meshes?

 

IIRC, it needs all of the valid TFC archives to be in the same addressable folder from where the contextual Meshes are pulled and driven by & with uModel. Even when extracted, the Skeletal+ (PSK) files require various textures resources to be independently shown in many external 3DViewer programs.

[Krazyguy75]

From my experience with Unreal, I'd assume the reason for the shadows remaining behind is that lighting has not been rebuilt.

[LiQuiD911]

I' quite new to UE, at the moment I do not know how to make actors in the streamed level cast shadows on the base map :\

The upk of the base map has shadow2d textures, I'll try setting them to "none" and see if the shadows disapear from the street

 

Ok,this works, but I'm doing this by directly hexediting the upk with Hexworkshop, "replace all" commands and wildcard "??" characters.

in this map each occurence of the hex 00006F0800000000000093050000000000000400000000000000???? needs to be overwritten as 00006F08000000000000930500000000000004000000000000000000 ( replace ???? with 0000)

 

so each occurence (around 620)

becomes someting like this

begin object name=ShadowMap2D_3181 class=ShadowMap2D
Texture=none // <--THIS CHANGES
CoordinateScale=(X=0.041015630,Y=0.16406250)
CoordinateBias=(X=0.53222660,Y=0.17578130)
LightGuid=(A=-477729252,B=1156287570,C=-2043271024,D=1206674466)
object end
// Reference: ShadowMap2D'TheWo

 

Let's see if the lighting can be removed..

the editor HexWorkshop cannot find patterns bigger than 64 hex digits and replacing 620 instances by hand is infeasable.

HxD doesn't support wildcards :\

 

http://i60.tinypic.com/11bngvt.jpg

 

On the long run, I think it's better to just hide everything to make the level a tileset and then stream it to load the art assets for the new map.

Edited January 28, 2015 by LiQuiD911

[LiQuiD911]

Ok, we have working stub textures , particles and sound effects ! only the meshes are imported.. oddly the stub meshes don't show my stub textures. A few tutorials later I created a basic ( not fully functional) Material and MaterialInstances :smile:

Loading a stub texture on a level that doesn't have it crashes.

 

At the moment I cannot find the car window meshes with umodel so they are missing. The frac meshes are part of the mesh ( duh xD) I have to separate them

 

http://i57.tinypic.com/vy2xx2.jpg

 

edit:yay color tints work too :smile: we can paint vehicles any color we want! importing actual textures isn't necessary for ingame , it's just for preview in the editor.

Also, imported meshes seem to be rotated by 180 degrees,nothing major.

Edited January 28, 2015 by LiQuiD911

[XMarksTheSpot]

You're making good progress, Liquid, keep it up :thumbsup: Very much appreciated :)

 

So I take it you're actually creating your map partially in the UDK? That would, indeed, be very handy, saves us from having to write a custom map editor ;)